[mensetmanusman]

People who disbelieve in free will are often not educated in the fact that the laws of physics don’t include explanation of most of what is observed and clearly lack in the area of the existence of mind, and are therefore extremely incomplete.

Also, it’s impossible to disprove the existence of free will because it requires will to make a conclusion like that.

[Vecr]

Why? A robot should be able to disprove free will by following the rules of correct reasoning, if such a thing is relatively easy, i.e. you would expect humans to ever solve it.

[Workaccount2]

This is just a free will version of "god-of-the-gaps", where you can shovel the basis of any unknown into the gaps of scientific understanding. We know far more about physics and the mind than we did 100 years ago, and the boundaries for free will to exist in have done nothing but shrink. Not even leaving a mark or hint behind.

Free will is much closer to leprechauns (we still haven't mapped every forest!) on the truth spectrum than it is to cancer cures or fusion energy.

[mensetmanusman]

I would believe you, but you had no choice but to output that information, so it’s noise :)

[maxdoop]

Choice is different than free will. We have will, but it is not free. We will make choices.

[mensetmanusman]

You can’t make choices without will, choices are made.

[anthk]

Your brain already did the choice for you before you even realized.

[mensetmanusman]

So the brain has a will?

[NemoNobody]

You haven't thought about this enough. Make it small so it's understandable - say any game involving choice. One has free will within the predetermined set of conditions of the game. A choice to buy a property or not in Monopoly seems like free will but it isn't really. Life is the same.

Considering that we as human beings don't get to decide what exactly we remember, recall, when we recall or how much we recall - that is memory. What we remember and what we forget. I point this out because it's not a conscious activity but also determines actions, greatly so even.

In the Monopoly example perhaps a property is bought bc its a favorite color or they remember winning before with it or its the one they kno their cousin wants. Whatever the personal reasons, there are reasons - nobody plays Monopoly with all logic and reason.

So we have limited circumstantial choices and predetermined biased assessments of those choices - both beyond our control.

What is free will in that context?

[mensetmanusman]

Complexity is unbounded, so the discussion around free will probably makes more sense on the opposite end of the choice spectrum. We have a countably infinite number of choices (due to thermodynamic energy limits) to make even within a framework of quantum mechanics, where electrons can only have discrete energy levels (limited number of ‘choices’). Choosing meaning from the infinite looks more like free will than deciding heads or tails.